


love today (anyway you want to)

by daisysusan



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 09:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/pseuds/daisysusan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Taylor Hall is a girl, and sometimes that's a big deal but other times it isn't. Mostly it just <i>is</i>, like all the other facts about the world, and it's just another piece of her, kind of like all the others. There's other things to think about anyway, like hockey. Mostly hockey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love today (anyway you want to)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been kind of a labor of love in a way that I don't normally feel my writing is, so I'm really pleased that it's finally. Anyway, many thanks to everyone who let me whine during the writing process, and especially to duckgirlie and opusculasedfera for their fantastic help.

Taylor is six when her mom sits her down and asks if she wants to play on the boys' hockey team. She says yes without even thinking about it, and spends the next few years bouncing between boys’ teams and older girls’ teams and older boys’ teams every season, trying to find a fit that’s challenging enough but not too challenging. It makes it kind of hard to make friends, bouncing between teams like that, and moving to Kingston doesn’t help. But she makes do and she’s playing hockey, which is really all that matters.

When she’s thirteen, she gets in trouble for bodychecking a sixteen-year-old girl, and she has her first serious conversation about playing in the OHL. Some other girls have. Not many, but Taylor just wants to play hockey.

\--

Her favorite thing about winter is hockey, obviously, but never having to shave her legs is a close second. She can go whole months without so much as thinking about it, because no one sees them under her pants, and no one cares on the ice. 

It always backfires in the spring, though, when it takes her forever to get them fit to be seen by anyone—well, mostly her mom—and she goes through about ten razors doing it. She also kind of shreds her legs, and ends up spending the first shorts-weather week of the year with an awkward band-aid over the place on her knee where she somehow took off about a square inch of skin.

At least no one makes her wear a skirt to the draft, so you can't see the giant band-aid in the pictures, but it's obvious in all the ones of the pre-draft activities and her mom rolls her eyes a lot.

\--

It’s not like Taylor’s not used to interviews and cameras, but even after all the practice she got with the Spitfires and in the pre-draft stuff, the draft itself is still overwhelming. Everyone wants to talk to her and Tyler together, which means everything takes twice as long, and by the time they’re herded off to their seats it’s already the most exhausting day of her life. 

It turns out pretty well, though, and somehow the interviews are a lot less tiring when she’s wearing an Oilers sweater over her blouse. 

\--

Tyler texts her a lot that summer. Most of it’s mundane stuff, about hockey and how boring summer is, but sometimes it’s a bit weirder. Messages she’s not sure how to answer, or that don’t really seem to follow from what they were talking about before. 

Most of the time, she just ignores them, and it doesn’t seem to bother Tyler. He always goes right back to texting her about other things, at least. Eventually the weird messages stop entirely, and it’s all chatter about camp and pictures of parties he’s at and random observations about TV shows.

Sometimes she wonders why he’s texting her, but mostly she doesn’t care. It doesn’t bother her, and usually the texts are at least a little funny. He wasn’t all that friendly during all their stuff together before the draft, but then neither was she, and the number of times she heard the word “rivalry” didn’t make her especially want to be nicer.

By the end of the summer, when she—with a lot of help from her parents—packs up a lot of her stuff to move to Edmonton (hopefully), she’s started to the enjoy having someone who isn’t going to judge her to send pictures of her room in disarray to. She’s seen pictures of his and they’re a lot worse.

\--

Camp reminds her that she and Ebs really did click that well, that it wasn’t all something they made up or wished into existence, so when he asks if she wants to get an apartment she agrees right away. Her mom is less wary than Taylor expected, probably because Ebby is like, the most parent-friendly dude ever, which makes everything a lot easier. 

It doesn’t take them long to find a place, because they’re not picky at all, and they mostly furnish it with IKEA stuff that makes their mothers cringe, because it’s easy. They do dip into their signing bonuses for a ridiculous reclining sofa and when Ebby’s mom looks visibly horrified by how ugly it is, they meet each other’s eyes and giggle for ten minutes straight.

This roommates thing is probably going to work out.

\--

October means hockey, same as it always does, but this year she’s playing on an NHL rink across the country from her family, with Ebby across the ice and a statue of Gretzky outside the building. 

It’s amazing and it’s terrifying and mostly it’s a dream come true.

Taylor feels like she’s spending all her time just keeping her head above water, playing and practicing and practicing and playing and sleeping. A lot of sleeping, because otherwise she’d be tired constantly. There’s more than one day off where she and Ebs do nothing but eat and sleep. 

She’s sloppy about keeping in touch with her parents, talking to them when they call but always too busy or tired to call them herself. Tyler’s texts get sporadic and terse, the way she’s sure hers have too. It would probably be good if she talked to people other than her teammates but she’s too tired to ever make it happen.

The team’s not doing amazing, but that’s how rebuilds work. She can be patient. She _can_. 

\--

> Jordan heard Taylor complain about bras a few times before they moved in together, but he kind of figured she was exaggerating about how much she hates wearing them. As the only girl on the team, she didn't have a roommate at World Juniors, and she seems to have accepted her fate of wearing them in public. 
> 
> But they get an apartment together and—well, she wasn't exaggerating. As soon as they get home from anywhere, Taylor takes her bra off, and usually flings it on the floor to boot. 
> 
> Once, after a couple of beers, sprawled on the sofa and too tired to move, she tells him that hockey is the only thing worth wearing a bra for.
> 
> So his best friend and roommate likes to wander around their apartment wearing threadbare t-shirts—some of which are his—with nothing underneath. He can deal with his, because he’s an adult with self-control and he’s not an asshole. 
> 
> It should probably feel weirder to call Hallsy his best friend than it does, Jordan’s aware of that much. But they’re together essentially all the time—at practices, at games, on the road, at home—and instead of getting sick of her, they just get more comfortable. Taylor falls asleep on his shoulder for the first time in December, just sacks out completely not even fifteen minutes after they board the plane. 
> 
> Jordan has to work to keep from dislodging her for the rest of the flight, but he can’t bring himself to wake her up, not with how visibly tired she’s been for weeks now. He ends up falling asleep as well, because he’s probably as exhausted as Taylor, but she’s still completely dead to the world when he wakes up an hour later, fuzzy with low-quality airplane sleep. The plane shakes a bit—it must have been the turbulence that woke him up—and she squirms on his shoulder, pressing her face in close to his neck. He can feel her breath against his skin, warm and steady. 
> 
> Eventually, the motion of the plane lulls him back to sleep, and he stays that way until they’re landing and he has to shake Hallsy awake and drag her to the car.

\--

Tyler’s great and stuff (no he’s not, he’s an asshole, but he’s a funny asshole) but the All Star Weekend would have been a thousand times better with Ebs there. Someone buys her enough drinks that she actually texts him that. Tyler laughs his ass off, of course, because he’s a dick. Taylor punches him in the arm, hard enough to hurt, and he flinches like he’s going to start whining loudly about how mean she is to him. Not that anyone else will care, because at least everyone seems to get that Segs is an asshole.

Still, they have a good time. Segs gives up whining that she’s mean and decides to whine about how she gets her own room instead, which is at least something she can be smug about. It’s kind of great, because she _knows_ there are legitimate reasons to argue that female players shouldn’t get special treatment like their own rooms, but he’s not bringing any of that up, he’s just telling her it’s unfair. 

Despite all the good company—company a hell of a lot better than Tyler, really—Taylor spends a lot of the weekend forcing herself not to text Ebby about every single thing she does. It’s weird to miss him, because she ought to be sick of him given all the time they spend together, but it’s also not, because she’s so used to having him around. 

At least it’s not for very long. And she gets to spend the weekend playing against friends, which is always great, makes her push herself in a way that other games sometimes don’t. 

It’s different with Tyler than it is with anyone else. Because they were rivals before they were friends, maybe, or because they still can’t the need to prove themselves better than the other. Regardless, it’s _great_. They grin at each other beforehand, all teeth and bravado and recklessness, and the rest of the game is a blur of plays and goals, even if it doesn’t actually matter.

\--

That’s kind of what her entire rookie year is like, a blur of games and games and sleep and practice and Ebs. They finish out of the playoffs, which isn’t surprising, but at least it’s not as bad as the year before. That’s what Taylor tells herself, between the interviews where she says “rebuilding” over and over, and tries not to wonder if anyone else remembers that Windsor went from rebuilding to winning the Mem Cup in two seasons. 

They’re not going to win much of anything next season, most likely. Taylor’s pretty smart about this stuff; she knows probably more about statistics than she needs to—Ebs teases her about it, sometimes—but adding another center isn’t going to solve their problems, as nice as that would be. That’s how rebuilds work, she knows. Windsor was lucky, it was juniors and their downward spiral hadn’t been as long or as thorough as Edmonton’s. And it’s not like she doesn’t appreciate the challenge, the drive to be better, the _potential_.

If Taylor hears the word potential again, she might puke. 

But it’s the offseason, there are other things to do. More training, not as many interviews. 

Less Ebs. 

There’s a tiny nagging voice in Taylor’s head that says _what if_ when she watches the final, remembers imagining what it would be like to wear a Bruins jersey. It’s fine, it’s really fine. Edmonton is great, and when she gets to skate her victory lap around the rink with the cup, it’ll be even sweeter because she’ll have helped drag the team there from basically nothing. And it’s going to happen. It’ll happen, and she’ll get to hand the cup to Ebby, and it’ll be as amazing as it is to imagine it now. Probably more. 

Wanting is easy, and it’s a good motivation to train hard all summer, but at the end she’s still pretty sure that, barring some insane fluke, this isn’t going to be their year. She wants it to be, wants it so hard it hurts like burning muscles after a hard workout, but wanting isn’t enough. It was when she was little, far and away the best player on her team, but not anymore. 

Maybe the playoffs, if they’re lucky.

\--

There’s boys in Kingston, of course, mostly ones who know who she is and act like it somehow makes her hotter than she’s the first girl to be drafted first overall. She’s never been quite able to put her finger on why it makes her skin crawl but it does. Some of them are cute and others aren’t, but the non-skin-crawly ones are never the ones who hit on her, and that just makes everything more difficult. 

It’s not like dating experience was easy to come by in Windsor, running between school and practices and games, but now she’s pretty sure she’s out of her depth. Some friends drag her out to a bar and swear that guys are hitting on her but it’s hard to tell unless they’re so obvious that it makes her want to knee them in the balls.

None of them are cute enough to be worth the trouble anyway. Or as cute as Ebby. Not that that matters.

\--

> Jordan is aware that he shouldn’t miss Hallsy as much as he does, but if he’s choosing to ignore the implications of that, it’s his business. And his friends should shut their mouths about all of it, frankly.
> 
> (Unsurprisingly, they don’t. At all. Ever. Even when Jordan tells them in no uncertain terms that it’s none of their business and _even if it were_ , which is isn’t, things with Hallsy aren’t like that. And he doesn’t want them to be like that.
> 
> He’s probably lying, but Zach doesn’t know that. Probably.)
> 
> Regardless, he buries himself in training all summer and talks to Hallsy as much as possible. It’s jarring, having to navigate a time difference just to talk to her on the phone, in the same way it’s weird that she’s not curled up on the sofa when he gets home from the grocery store and he doesn’t see her stumbling into the kitchen sleep-addled and groggy while he’s making toast. 
> 
> It’ll be nice to get back to Edmonton.

\--

Tayor’s thrilled when summer is over, when she’s back on the ice in Edmonton. It settles into something less overwhelming quickly enough, but the excitement never really fades. 

The year is a grind again, games and practices and games until Taylor feels like she’s about to lose touch with every part of herself that isn’t driven by hockey. Ebs is playing amazingly, and she’s—well, she was keeping up until Wilson slammed her into the boards and fucked her shoulder up. Not that it wasn’t fucked up before, but it tipped over into “so fucked up that playing isn’t possible” and now she’s stuck watching Ebby score stupid numbers of goals by himself while she tries not to pout too visibly in the press box. 

It fucking hurts, is the thing, and not in the way she’s used to, not the occasional dull aches or twinges of pain. This is real, intense pain, the kind that makes her wish she could take more painkillers than the doctor told her she’s allowed. It gets a little better with time, eases back into being something that’s mostly manageable. She has to take more painkillers for it now than she did before, but it’s not too bad. Hopefully not, anyway. It’s enough better that she’s cleared to play. 

\--

It bothers her more than she thought it would, that she won't have time to go home for Christmas. She feels too young to be having Christmas without her parents—she's barely twenty and can't cook anything that doesn't come in a box, that means she's still young enough to want to see her parents on Christmas morning, right?

Ebby doesn't say anything about it, but she thinks he knows that it's bothering her. He's good at knowing things like that. He's going to be a great boyfriend for someone, and it's part of why. 

Instead, he just makes her all the KD she wants, even if he insists on putting peas and chicken in it. Somehow, his KD always tastes better than hers even though she follows the instructions on the box to the letter. He refuses to tell her what he does, but it doesn't matter as long as he's around to fix it for her. 

"Come to Calgary for Christmas," he says as he hands her a bowl of KD and a bottle of Gatorade after an especially grueling morning skate. “And take your painkillers.”

"Huh?" Taylor says, her brain still fixed on Angry Birds and the sloppy passes she made during drills. If she’s not going to be able to shoot the way she wants to—

"Come home with me for Christmas."

If it were anyone else in the world, it would sound like an awkward meet-the-boyfriend's-family proposition, but it's just Ebby, and all she can think is that after her own parents, there's no one else she'd rather open presents with on Christmas morning. 

"Okay," she says, smiling broadly. He smiles back, and her stomach flops pleasantly. Maybe this Christmas won't be so bad. 

\--

Christmas turns out kind of amazing, and Taylor doesn’t know why she’s surprised. Mrs. Eberle is amazing, which she already knew, and so is the rest of Ebby’s family. They’re so nice that she’s a little overwhelmed and left stumbling over heartfelt thank-yous several times a day. Mrs. Eberle keeps insisting that Taylor doesn’t need to help with anything and sending them off to play NHL ‘12. 

Taylor calls her parents on Christmas Eve and tells them about it all, and her mom wishes her a merry Christmas with a strangely wistful tone. “I’m glad they all seem to like you so much,” she says, and Taylor doesn’t know what to make of it. 

“Thanks,” she says, because that feels like the best choice. “Merry Christmas to you both!” The last bit stings a little, a reminder that they won’t be here in the morning, but then Dustin yells that it’s time for dinner and she has to go. 

\--

Taylor wakes up on Christmas morning to a soft knock on her door. It’s barely 7:30 when she glances at the clock.

“Come in,” she says, hoping it’s loud enough to be heard. 

The door edges open just a crack and Ebby slips into the room. “Merry Christmas,” he says, with a smile that’s almost shy. 

“Merry Christmas,” Taylor says back. Ebby closes the door behind him, and takes a few steps so that he can flop onto the bed next to her. It’s so normal and yet so not—they do this all the time at home, sprawl across each other’s beds first thing in the morning, when the walk to the kitchen is still too daunting but they need to figure out whether there’s enough food to make breakfast. But here, in Ebby’s parents’ house before anyone is awake, it feels— _illicit_ , somehow. It’s absurd, they live together without a chaperone all season, anything they wanted to do, they could do in Edmonton. But Ebby’s clearly sneaking in, even if it’s just because he doesn’t want to wake anyone up. 

He’s lying on his stomach, head resting on his arm and twisted so that he’s looking at her, and he’s smiling just a tiny bit. For a second, she thinks he’s about to say something, but then his face closes off a little bit, and he stays quiet. 

They lie there for a long time, dozing and not talking. Eventually the house starts to smell like Christmas cooking—spices and chocolate and bacon for breakfast—and Taylor knows they ought to get up. 

Ebby touches her arm so gently she thinks she’s imagined it until she turns to look at him. 

“You’re my best friend, you know that, right?” he says, and he looks so serious. Like he’s genuinely concerned that she might not know that. 

Taylor nods, not quite trusting her voice. She feels like it might come out embarrassingly wobbly. 

There’s a moment where she’s not sure what to do and it feels like Ebby isn’t either, and then they’re hugging. It’s weird, because they’re still lying on the bed, but it’s also not, because it’s them. She buries her face in Ebby’s neck for a few moments, and when he pulls away she whispers, “You’re my best friend too.” 

Ebby smiles at her, and then pushes her out of the bed. “Get up, Hallsy. Presents!”

Taylor laughs, calling him a five-year-old, and races him downstairs in her bathrobe over flannel pajama pants with reindeer on them. 

\--

It doesn’t take long for the articles saying that she’s protecting her shoulder to start popping up.

Taylor’s not exactly surprised. It’s affecting her play. She knows it, everyone can see it. She’s flinching away from hits, sometimes, when it’s already sore or it seems like the angle will be too harsh. It makes her a worse hockey player, because that’s not a style she’s ever played. 

It just hurts so fucking much. 

She’s got painkillers for when it gets too bad, and pitying looks from Ebs when she’s curled up on the sofa watching TSN with an icepack on her shoulder. She can make do. 

\--

Taylor really does know how to deal with her hair—regular braids and occasionally really terrible French braids—she just doesn't like going to the trouble when she can just throw it in a messy bun or a ponytail. She can get someone else to do it for fancy dinners and stuff, and the rest of the time no one gives a shit. 

Basically: if it’s long enough that she needs to braid it for games, it’s too long, and she bumps getting a hair cut up to the top of her to do list. People always say the normal things, about liking it when she leaves her hair down and how pretty it looks when it’s long, but Taylor really doesn’t care. Mostly it’s just annoying that everyone else cares so much about her hair.

Really, the only upside to having it long is that sometimes, when they’re a couple of beers in and cuddling on the couch, Ebby starts playing with it absent-mindedly, and that happens a lot more when it’s long than when it’s short. Taylor is honestly willing to braid it sometimes if that’s the trade-off. 

The shoulder makes all of it harder—it’s harder to brush and harder to braid and finally she grits her teeth and takes a pair of scissors to her ponytail. It comes out an uneven mess, the ends ragged and tickling where they graze her shoulders. 

She spends two days sulking around the apartment with messy hair, ignoring the raised eyebrows she gets at practice and the pointed reminder the whole team gets about business dress meaning more than just showing up to games in a suit. Ebby doesn’t say anything, not even a mild question about whether she needs a ride to the hairdresser, but eventually Taylor drags herself there anyway. She leaves with her hair a bit shorter and a lot more even, and a weird uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

It’s easier to curl up on the sofa and stare at the TV screen than it is to try and sort out why getting her hair cut was upsetting, and she’s more asleep than not when Ebs comes in from wherever he was—the grocery store, maybe, there’re bags in the kitchen—and drops onto the couch next to her. Taylor doesn’t say anything beyond a “hi” so quiet he probably didn’t hear her over the TV, but she curls into him anyway, and he settles an arm over her shoulder. 

“I like your hair,” he says, nearly in her ear, and she smiles. 

When Taylor doesn’t say anything, Ebby shifts so that he’s running his fingers through the ends of her hair. She falls asleep like that, and wakes up what feels like a long time later, with a blanket draped over her and a note on the coffee table that says there’s an ice pack for her shoulder in the freezer. 

The uncomfortable feeling in her stomach hasn’t gone away, but it’s hard to focus on that when she’s busy trying to list off all the reasons that she shouldn’t want to kiss Ebby.

(There aren’t many, which makes it hard to keep from thinking about how much she _does_.)

\--

No one ever explained to her about all the things she’s not allowed to do as a female pro athlete, because it’s not nearly that clean-cut and her parents never wanted her to approach it like that, but she knows how to read. She knows what people say, she saw the rumors that flew after pictures of Jordan Staal getting drunk and affectionate with her teammates surfaced. 

For the most part, the media isn’t terrible, but stuff still shows up. Second- and third-rate blogs speculating whether female athletes’ performance varies on a predictable monthly cycle, the even gossipier ones writing in-depth posts speculating about intra-squad romances. It’s better now than a few years ago, when every so often there would be special interest television spots about the extra dangers women face playing contact sports.

The point is that Taylor absolutely knows the assumptions people make about female hockey players banging their teammates, and given the things people say when it’s just an assumption, well. It probably wouldn’t go over great if she were actually banging her teammate. Even if it makes her stomach twist pleasantly and her skin tingle when Ebs kisses her forehead, and just the memory makes her smile stupidly. 

Hockey is the most important thing. Absolutely, without question, and it has been for as long as she can remember. No one is worth risking that, not even Ebs.

_At least, not yet_ , a nagging voice at the back of her mind says. She ignores it.

\--

The worst thing about having a giant cut on her face is that she can't play. The second-worst thing about having a giant cut on her face is that she can't really do anything else, either. She can't even make dumb faces at Ebby, because it pulls the stitches and hurts like _hell_. 

She whines instead. 

"Everything sucks," she says about ten times a day, drawing the words out as long as she can. 

At first, Ebby argues it, tries to comfort her by reminding her the stitches won't take long to heal, but she's not willing to listen and he eventually gives up. Instead, he starts agreeing with her and, somehow, that's worse. The sympathy was nice, having someone to tell her that it'll be better soon, and that she probably won’t even look like a freak once it’s healed. 

Still, she definitely wakes up just enough to feel him kissing her forehead just next to the cut during one of her naps on the couch, and it’s really hard to be mad when her stomach is turning over itself from the feeling of Ebby’s lips against her skin.

\--

"Watch a movie with me," Taylor says, frowning as much as she can with her forehead still not entirely healed. Her shoulder’s aching more than usual to boot, and everything is irritating and painful. 

Ebby gestures to the game he’s watching, like he actually wants to see the end more than he wants to keep her from complaining. “Football suuuuuuuucks,” Taylor says, and Ebby looks like he wants to push her off the couch. He can’t, though, because she’s totally an invalid or something, and he’d feel awful if he made her break her stitches. 

Honestly, she’s kind of counting on that. 

“Just because you have no taste,” he says, but he smiles at her and hands her the remote anyway. 

Taylor scoots down the sofa on her butt until her back is pressed to Ebby’s side, because he’s warm and comfortable and Edmonton is cold as balls, okay? She starts flipping through the channels until she finds Miss Congeniality, which makes Ebby groan that she’s seen it a thousand times. 

She sticks her bottom lip out, a ridiculously exaggerated pout. “If you want to watch a different movie, you can get one from the shelf?”

Ebby sighs but wraps his arm around her shoulders. “If it’ll make you feel better, we can watch this.” 

\--

By the time Taylor actually has to try and look decent in public, her eye isn’t swollen shut anymore, which is an improvement, but she’s still even more of a mess than usual, especially because moving her shoulder is a hell of a lot less appealing than it used to be. And normally she doesn’t care, because she’s _choosing_ to be a mess, but it sucks when she doesn’t have any control over how gross she looks. 

Basically: if she’s going to look like she got hit in the face by a truck—and she totally does, Whits actually _flinched_ the first time he saw how bruised she was—she wants to at least have the option of shaving her damn legs. 

She whines about it, because it’s annoying that she can’t do things, and because her legs are starting to get that weird prickle-itch and that’s annoying too. Pretty much everything in her life is annoying right now, including how the stitches itch and she can’t scratch them. But her shoulder hurts like hell and her face is still all swollen and sore and achey when she holds it at weird angles. Shaving would be an exercise in pain, and probably a lot of cuts. 

Ebby keeps looking at her like he can’t figure her out when she does, and it’s probably because normally she complains about having to shave, not not being able to, but like, what the fuck ever. She’s allowed to be complicated. 

Anyway, she’s not really surprised until, after a day of her whining, he looks over at her during a loading screen on Call of Duty and says, “I can shave your legs for you. Uh, if you want, I mean.”

Taylor doesn’t answer for what’s probably kind of a long time, because she’s focused on the game and then because she has no idea what to say. 

“Um,” she says eventually, just so that she won’t seem like she’s ignoring him. “That would be nice?”

“Cool,” Ebs says. “Just let me know when.”

\--

Taylor, well—she may have gotten herself in over her head with this one. She’s sitting on her bathroom counter and Ebby is standing between her legs, frowning as he tries to figure out the logistics. 

He’s not so close that she could just lean forward and kiss him, but she could easily grab the front of his shirt and pull him in. He’s standing between her legs, his hands resting on her bare knees, staring at her intently. Taylor’s having to put a lot of effort into keeping her breathing steady. 

Usually it’s not an issue; usually she can ignore how ridiculously attracted she is to Ebby. But this might be too much. 

“Okay,” he says, looking up. His voice sounds a little off, tight in a way it isn’t usually. 

“Come on, eh?” she says, laughing and making like she’s going to kick him. He laughs, wrapping a hand around her swinging ankle. 

“Deal’s off if you hurt me.” 

Taylor pouts, exaggerating and ridiculous. Ebby flicks at her lower lip, not enough to hurt, and she can’t hold back a laugh. “Fine, I won’t.” 

He runs a warm washcloth down her leg and soaps it up after that, and Taylor can barely remember that she really does need to keep breathing. Ebby’s focused on her leg, sliding the razor up gently and then rinsing it off. 

It’s not like she’s getting off on someone else putting a blade to her skin or something but somehow it’s kind of hot anyway. Ebby has his eyes fixed on her, and he has his hands all over her bare skin, and it’s a lot to process. He doesn’t say anything the entire time, except a soft “Next leg” as he places the first back down against the cabinets. It’s almost uncharacteristically gentle—not that Ebby is mean but he doesn’t usually treat her like she’s delicate, either. (It’s because she’s not delicate and she has the scars to prove it, but still.)

By the time he finishes with her second leg, she’s struggling to keep from squirming on the counter. Her breathing is more or less steady, though it’s taking a lot of effort, and when one of his hands slips up to her thigh, she forgets entirely for a few seconds. The sharp inhale when she remembers again is definitely audible, but Ebby either doesn’t notice or pretends not to. 

“All done,” he says. His voice is still weird—maybe even weirder than earlier, tense and a little rough. 

“Thanks,” she says, trying to sound sincere and not like she’s incredibly turned on. She does mean it, it’s really nice of him to do. She can totally manage lotion by herself, even if it’s a pain in the ass. And shoulder.

Ebby steps back to let her hop down from the counter, and she smiles a little uncomfortably as she slips into her room. 

\--

Taylor tries not to think about Ebby when she masturbates, because it feels weird and intrusive and also a lot like getting her hopes up, but sometimes it’s a lost cause and that night is one of those times.

\--

Taylor’s like, super legit drunk. She probably should have paid more attention to how many beers she had—and shots, were there shots? There were probably shots. But anyway, she’s drunk and Ebby is drunk and Gags is—Gags is _really drunk_. Everyone bought him a drink. Like, everyone in the bar. And probably everyone in Edmonton who wasn’t at the bar would have if they’d known it was an option.

Anyway the point is. Drunk. And awesome, they’re all _so awesome_ , and Ebby is extra awesomer than everyone. And he smells good too. 

Taylor scoots over in the booth so that she’s close enough to Ebby to rest her head on his shoulder. The angle is a little weird, but it’s totally worth it ‘cause his shoulders are the comfiest ever. He wraps an arm around her and tugs her closer. 

“Hi,” she says, mostly into his shoulder.

“Hi,” he says back, and she can feel his breath on her hair.

Gags laughs, the kind of delighted laugh he has for when they’re being ridiculous. “Ebs, that girl over there”—he gestures at someone she can’t see—“totally wants to get all up on that.” 

Ebby makes a vague noise. Taylor presses her head into his shoulder and grabs at his shirt. 

“Don’t leave,” she whines. 

Some sort of conversation she doesn’t really pay attention to happens over her head, but Ebby doesn’t push her off to go talk to the girl who apparently thinks he’s hot. Which is right, because tonight is—tonight is for teammates. Awesome teammates. Teammates with awesome shoulders for sleeping on. Basically teammates who are awesome together should stick together. And stuff.

Everything’s kind of a blur for a while after that. There’s music in the bar, and Gags must leave at some point because he comes back with more drinks. He got her water, and she frowns at it. 

“Drink it, Hallsy,” Ebby says, rubbing her arm gently, and she does, because Ebby is smart about things like this. 

They leave like—later. It’s later, but that’s about all Taylor can say. Ebby puts his arm around her waist and she only stumbles a little when she takes her first step. After that she’s fine, totally fine. Besides, Ebby is kind of drifting back and forth too. He’s totally drunk. Gags is on the phone with someone, smiling and laughing and still looking totally plastered. Taylor doesn’t want to focus enough to listen to what he’s saying, she’d rather just lean against Ebby until their cab gets there. 

It comes eventually and she falls asleep in the backseat, and Ebby helps her stumble, barely awake, into their apartment. He even forces her to drink a whole bottle of water and take some aspirin before she falls face-first into her bed. Basically Ebby is the best, even if she falls asleep before she tells him that.

\--

Taylor’s season ends early and she can’t honestly say she’s sad to see it go. She feels a bit like her entire body is coming apart, and it’s a relief to get away from it all. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that next year will be better, but at least next year she probably won’t be concussed and have stitches in her face and have a shoulder that feels like someone put it through a shredder. The bar to clear for “better” is pretty damn low. 

She gets her surgery and she does her rehab and she has a lot of serious conversations with Bobby about what she should do if there’s a lockout. None of it’s fun, and it doesn’t even come with the reward of curling up and playing Call of Duty with Ebs at the end of the day. 

It would be lying to say she’s not thinking about that when she agreed to playing in Oklahoma City, even though she totally says other stuff about working with her teammates and staying in the same system and how it’ll be good to be used to North American hockey when the lockout ends. Whenever that is. 

\--

She’s firm when Jordan pushes, tells her she ought to play in Europe, but he probably suspects anyway. He’s always been able to see through her in a way that would be annoying if it weren’t sweet. 

\--

> Hallsy’s not going to Europe, and she _ought_ to go to Europe because she’s good enough to kill on a team in Switzerland or Germany, but she’s not doing it. He tries not to feel guilty about it, but if the tables were turned the promise of getting to play with her would probably be enough to keep him from turning down another offer. Besides, it might not be such a big deal, given that she’s not going to play until November, probably. 
> 
> (It’s weird not having her around for the beginning of the season, and Jordan doesn’t let himself get too happy that at least she’ll be there soon.)

\--

Taylor is bouncing on the balls of her feet when she gets off the plane in Oklahoma City. Sure, she just got off a long flight, and the lockout’s still going on, and she’s probably the first person ever to be excited to be in Oklahoma City, but at least there’s going to be _hockey_. Hockey, and Ebby, and things to do other than watch TV and do shoulder rehab. 

Ebby meets her at the airport with a hug that’s almost too cautious of her shoulder and a bunch of stories about locker room antics. By the time the cab they catch pulls up to Ebby’s—their—apartment, Taylor is laughing and barely feels like she missed any time at all. 

\--

There’s another girl on the team in OKC, a tall girl from Windsor whose muscles are even more defined than Taylor’s. Her name is Emma Wiseman. Taylor is awkward around her, tense and uncertain; she hasn’t played on a team with any girls in a long time, and it’s weird to start again.

Mostly, she just ignores Emma and tries to act the way she would with Nuge or Schultzy or Whits when they have to talk. She thinks Emma might be a little thrown too. There are so few girls on any of the teams that it’s fairly unusual to have two at once. It’s easy to know what to do with an opponent—there’s no time to worry when she’s about to get checked and have the puck stolen. They chat about Windsor a little, their favorite restaurants and a terrible bakery that Taylor thankfully never went to. 

Finally, Taylor says something about going to see John Tavares play in the OHL and Emma totally lights up. The conversation ends with them in the hall with their sticks, Emma trying to teach Taylor a trick shot she taught herself when she was in high school. “It’s completely useless, doesn’t even work in shootouts,” she says, laughing, but Taylor wants to know how to do it anyway.

“I can use it to piss Ebby off sometime,” she says, and Emma laughs. 

“That’s not easy to do.” 

“I have it down to an art.” Taylor grins, and Emma grins back and—right. Emma’s a hockey player too. 

\--

OKC is weird (a lot of the time) and too warm (always), and Taylor keeps waking up wishing that she needed extra blankets on her bed and gloves just to go out and get the mail. They all go out for her 21st birthday, and it’s weird that she barely needs a jacket but at least she’s out with friends. Emma and Schultzy buy her shots with progressively dirtier names while Ebby looks uncomfortable. Nuge just looks grateful that he’s too young for them to force their porny drinks on him.

Taylor doesn’t care. It was always more funny than embarrassing, and after the fourth shot the embarrassment is totally gone. Besides, buttery nipples are fucking awesome. 

“Okay,” Emma says, putting two shot glasses down in front of Taylor. Where did she come from? She wasn’t—well maybe she was. Taylor’s not sure, she was pretty busy explaining something probably super important that she can’t remember anymore. Whatever, Emma brought her more shots. “That one,” Emma says carefully, pointing to the one on the left, “is a blow job, and the other one is an orgasm.” 

Ebby, sitting next to her, makes a small choking noise. 

“For the blow job,” Emma continues, “you put your hands behind your back, pick the shot glass up with your mouth, and tip your head back to swallow.” Taylor nods, putting her hands behind her and frowning. 

“Seems doable.” 

She manages it, though a little of the liquor dribbles down her chin, and fistpumps afterward. She turns to high-five Ebby, and he smiles at her and returns the gesture, but his face looks off somehow. His leg is perfectly still where it’s pressed against hers, instead of vibrating the way it usually does when he’s drunk. She downs the second shot easily, and grins at Ebby cause she wants to make sure he’s having fun.

“Those were awesome,” she says. “Do you want one?”

“Huh?” Ebby says, blinking.

“A blow job!” Taylor says cheerfully. 

“Oh um, right. Sure?”

They each do one more shot, though Ebby is still weird, and then he declares her cut off. He makes her chug a big glass of water before they leave the bar, and another one when they get to the apartment, but Taylor wakes up the next morning feeling a lot less terrible than she expected, so it’ll do.

\--

> Jordan’s made it through two and a half years of living with Hallsy—her bras strewn everywhere, her drunken cuddliness, her penchant for threadbare t-shirts and underwear and nothing else—so it’s a bit embarrassing that the first time he’s so attracted to her that it makes him act like a jerk involved her doing shooters with dirty names. 
> 
> He’s just going to blame the alcohol and hope that he can pretend none of it ever happened in the morning.
> 
> It’s going to be really hard to purge Hallsy cheerfully asking him if he wants a blow job from his memory.

\--

And then the lockout ends. There’s really nothing else to say; one day they’re playing in OKC and then it’s all over and they’re flying back to Edmonton and it’s a blur of training and reunions and then they’re playing again. 

\--

 

Being suspended sucks a lot, maybe even more than being injured. Like, it sucks cause she can’t play, and cause it’s entirely her fault, and because people keep looking at her like they’re disappointed in her. When she’s injured or sick, she can usually pout at Ebby until he does things for her, but right now he’s implacable. 

It’s not like she doesn’t know this sucks even more for the team than it does for her. That was clear from the second Horc walked into the dressing room, quiet and serious, and written all over Coach’s face after the game, too. She fucked up, and she knows that, and if people could let her forget for a damn minute that would be nice.

She wants to go out and get drunk, but she can already see tomorrow’s headlines if she does— _Suspended Taylor Hall On Bender_ or something. Besides, she still has to practice tomorrow, and probably for longer than everyone else to make up for missing the game.

At least it’s only for two games. 

\--

Taylor doesn’t really have any frame of reference for how much more or less shit she would get if she weren’t a girl. People ask her about it sometimes, in long, serious interviews when just praising her teammates and talking about the potential of the team won’t cut it, and she’s always kind of stumped. 

It’s tough to say because like, Tyler gets more shit than she does, but Tyler’s an idiot and also an asshole. And Ebby gets less, but Ebby is a saint. Taylor is like, less of an asshole than Tyler but more of one than Ebby, so maybe it’s the same amount of shit she would get if she were a dude. Or maybe not. 

Besides, it’s not like she could say “all my teammates are assholes to me because I’m a girl” in an interview even if it were true, so she ends up saying that her teammates are great and that people aren’t usually jerks. It’s true, which is nice, and it’s sort-of-maybe-almost answering the question, which is probably the closest she’s going to get.

\--

They miss the playoffs by a mile again—again, again—and it still sucks. The last few games are good, which makes it easier to sound optimistic in exit interviews, but the knot in her stomach is still there. It doesn’t help that for a week there in the middle, it seemed feasible, like they could claw their way in as an eighth seed. Besides, they’re supposed to be better than this—she’s supposed to be better than this. 

The day they clean out their lockers, she and Ebs go to Gags and Schultzy’s place for dinner. It’s too empty without Nuge there as well, and she feels like he ought to be with them. The kids meant to save the Oilers, all having a slightly depressing dinner and dwelling on a twenty-third overall finish. The silence gets heavy before Gags puts his plate on the coffee table and gets up, putting Casino Royale into the DVD player without bothering to ask for anyone’s input. 

It’s a nice distraction; they’ve all seen it a thousand times already so no one complains when Taylor whistles at Bond coming out of the water or Gags decides that his commentary is more important than the plot. Gags and Schultzy have most of a two-four, so they all have a few. Ebs cuts himself off early enough to be good to drive home, but that just means that Taylor’s free to have as much as she wants. 

She opens another can while Schultzy tries to defend owning some movie she’s never heard of that Ebs thinks is terrible; he’s currently insisting it was a gag gift. Ebs looks mostly unconvinced, which is understandable because Schultzy has terrible taste. After a few minutes, Gags shuts them up by insisting they all pay attention to the movie.

Taylor takes this as an opportunity to pay attention to Daniel Craig’s pecs, and comment on it repeatedly. Gags tells her to shut up a bunch, but she kicks him until he stops. It’s not like he never makes obnoxious comments during movies. 

They’re all still a bit moody, but beer and mindless chatter hide it well, and Taylor just kind of drifts in it once she gets bored annoying Gags. She’s tucked against Ebby’s side, drinking her beer slowly and trying not to get too caught up in the scent of his skin. The movie isn’t holding her interest, or maybe she’s too sleepy or too buzzed to focus on it. Everything is slow and simple and unimportant, for the first time all day. 

On her other side, the one not pressed against Ebby, Gags and Schultzy are having some sort of argument about whether or not Schultzy is allowed to do something. It ends when Gags plays the veteran card. She doesn’t want to get up and go back into the real world, where everything is unsettled and they would be golfing in May except it’s still snowing because they live in the fucking Arctic. 

“Can you golf in the snow?” she asks aloud. 

“I’ve never tried,” Schultzy says, his words drawn out slow and lazy. 

“The ball would get buried every time it landed,” Ebs points out.

Gags kicks him. “You’re too sober for this conversation.”

Taylor can feel it when Ebs laughs, can hear it resonate in his chest. His shirt smells good, and she burrows a little closer against him, closing her eyes. 

“Are you going to fall asleep on me?” he asks in her ear. She’s not entirely sure, really. 

“Maybe.” The word is drawn out sleepy-slow, though, and her eyes are drifting shut. “Probably.” 

“How about we head home, then? I don’t want to carry you to the car.” 

Taylor hums. Ebs shoves her gently until she’s moved enough that he can stand up, and then he pulls her up as well. His arm curls around her waist, which is nice because she’s swaying on her feet. Whether it’s from exhaustion or beer, she’s too tired to say. 

Behind them, Schultzy makes a crack about Ebs being whipped. They flip him off nearly simultaneously, which probably doesn’t help their case but whatever. Schultzy doesn’t have an awesome best friend like Ebby. 

\--

> Hallsy’s completely sacked out by the time they get back to their house, her head resting against the window. It’s exactly what Jordan expected, but it doesn’t change the fact that he would have a hell of a time carrying her inside. She’s heavy, all dense muscle even on a frame that looks lanky. 
> 
> “Hallsy,” he says, shaking her shoulder gently. “We’re home.” 
> 
> She makes a soft, sleepy noise that he dutifully doesn’t imagine hearing in his bed. 
> 
> He ends up mostly carrying her anyway; she’s upright but only barely, slumped against him with her head on his shoulder. Jordan doesn’t blame her at all—he kind of wants to do the same, just faceplant somewhere and not get up for a while. Maybe not until the playoffs are over. Hallsy will want to watch, he knows, because she’s part masochist and part genuine fan, and he’ll watch to keep her company. (Not that he wouldn’t anyway, but it’s nice to pretend sometimes.) 
> 
> Hallsy’s too limp and unwieldy for him to settle her gently on her bed, but dropping like a rock doesn’t seem to disturb her too much, so it works out. She’s still clinging to him, her fingers tight on the hem of his shirt. 
> 
> “Stay,” she says, voice already scratchy with sleep. 
> 
> Jordan’s eyes are drifting shut as it is, and he doesn’t feel like arguing the point, and her bed is so much closer. He manages to get her shoes off, and his as well, before he does exactly what he wanted to and faceplants on the bed. There’s no alarm but they don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow and that, at least, feels pretty nice.
> 
> \--
> 
> Waking up in Hallsy’s bed makes it a lot harder to convince himself of all the reasons he shouldn’t want to wake up in her bed every day, and maybe that makes Jordan a little tetchy. Or a lot tetchy, to the point where he avoids Hallsy for a while, and snaps at Whits because Whits’ existence reminds him of Hallsy. 
> 
> It’s a bad time to be an asshole to Whits, but he’s mad at himself for wanting to wake up with an arm wrapped around Hallsy’s waist every morning, and he’s mad that he did it once and now he knows what he’s missing.

\--

They should probably do a better job of packing the house up for the summer than they do, but it’s so tense that Taylor mostly wants to get away. Kingston is boring as hell, but at least in Kingston she won’t have to have any awkward not-conversations with Whits. He’s not going to be back September and they all know it, but she’s not ready to talk about it yet. 

Neither is Ebs, it seems, because they don’t bring it up even when Whits is packing up his stuff in a way that makes it obvious he’s not going to come back. Taylor got Jonesey to snap a picture of the three of them in their gear, and she instagrams it. It doesn’t really help, because that’s not the problem. The problem is that she _likes_ it, likes having him around to be surly and funny and a little mean. But they’re not talking about it, and she doesn’t know to bring it up, so she just snaps at Ebs a lot, and doesn’t meet Whits’ eyes. 

Apparently they were much better roommates than they are at ceasing to be roommates, because they don’t even manage to say proper goodbyes. They just go their separate ways without so much as a cursory good-luck-next-year. It’s like they’re going to see each other again in September, except they’re _not_ and Taylor desperately wants to say something but doesn’t have the words. 

By the time she gets back to Kingston she’s sullen and mad at Ebs for not bothering to find a way to broach the horrible impasse the three of them reached, and for not hugging her goodbye, and for generally being weird and distant. 

\--

It’s a weird summer. Taylor makes a point of being busier than usual, which mostly means training a lot. She goes to a few Jays games, accidentally ignores PK, and visits Ebs for his charity golf tournament. The best thing about spending most of her time training is that it’s really easy to ignore things.

Things like Ebs, mainly. 

\--

Taylor gets invited to orientation camp for the Canadian Women’s Olympic Team. It sounds a little conceited to say that she’s not surprised, but she isn’t. It’s exciting, of course, but she knows how good she is, and the competition isn’t at stiff for the women’s camp as it is for the men’s. 

She’s played with a few of the people here, but not in a while. Mostly, she’s played against them. 

Basically, Taylor is totally blasé about the whole thing until she shows up and she’s playing with Jordan Staal and Matty and Marti St. Louis and _Hayley Wickenheiser_ —well, she’s played with Matty before, but it’s been a long time—and then she freaks out a bit. 

She stops pretending to be too busy to text Ebs, because he’s the best person to text when she’s freaking out. It helps that he’s freaking out a bit too. They’re on opposite sides of the country—his camp doesn’t stand for another week, and she’s in Quebec City anyway, but he keeps sending her messages that don’t say anything except “Sidney Crosby.” She can basically hear him saying it, intimidated and overawed and excited all at once. 

Sometimes she wishes she could play with Crosby, briefly imagines what it would be like to play with him centering her and Ebs, but it’s ridiculous and there’s no point in complaining that the really elite female players ought to be on the men’s national team. That battle had been fought and lost a half-dozen times before she was even eligible for any national teams. At least she got to play at World Juniors. 

She and Jordan bond over the number of times they get scolded for checking; Marti laughs at them but also sends them warning glances. Taylor smiles back sheepishly. 

Still, they manage to gel pretty well as a team anyway. The roster isn’t finalized when their week in Quebec ends, but whoever is left when the last cuts are made will be great. It’s not the NHL, and nothing’s ever going to feel as easy and natural as feeding passes to Ebs that he turns into beautiful goals, but this’ll do. 

(It’s nice to be on a team that has a real shot at winning something right now, where she won’t have to be patient and hedge her bets through years of rebuilding. Maybe the Spitfires spoiled her.)

\--

Ebs actually snapchats her a picture of the back of Crosby’s head from his camp the next week, and then one of of John Tavares that has “I can ask him for an autograph for you” as the caption.

She replies with a picture of herself flipping off her phone camera, which he screenshots because of course he does.

Taylor has no idea why people don’t seem to think Ebby is an asshole, because he’s _such_ an asshole.

\--

They keep the same house, even though it’s weird without Whits, because they’re making stupid money now and it’s a nice place. It feels way more grown up than Taylor ever expected to be at 21—a house with her name on the title, and somehow sharing it with just Ebs feels a lot more domestic than when it was just the two of them in a sparse apartment. 

After training camp, Ebby’s mom comes up and strong-arms them into getting some actual decorations for the house. Taylor’s not actually sure how they got out of it last year, probably just because everything was so rushed after the lockout, but regardless, they don’t have a choice now. They manage to keep her from hiring a decorator for them, but it’s a near thing. Instead, she spends a day dragging them around the type of stores that sell fancy throw pillows and distressed frames for artwork. Not that they own any art, but Taylor wouldn’t be surprised if she buys some of that for them as well. 

She’ll never admit it, but having some decent furniture and stuff makes it feel more like a home. Mostly that’s a little scary, because Taylor doesn’t feel like she’s enough of an adult to live in a house that has throw pillows. Everyone she knows with a nicely decorated house is like, an adult with a family and a settled life. Her parents, and Ebby’s, and older guys with kids and wives. 

It freaks her out a lot less after the first cold snap, when the house gets chilly and she and Ebs end up napping under the pleasant, color-coordinated blanket Mrs. Eberle bought for them and arranged nearly across the back of their hideous sofa. It’s a great blanket, too—soft and fluffy without being stiflingly hot. Perfect for naps. 

Maybe there’s something to this decorating thing after all.

Taylor’s still totally dubious about the merit of decorative baskets and fancy mirrors in hallways, but that’s a fair tradeoff for great blankets, really. 

\--

> Jordan is 99 percent sure Hallsy has no idea the guy she's talking to wants to take her home, because she's flailing her hands around and talking about Pavel Datsyuk's stickhandling, and that's not a euphemism. 
> 
> At least, he really hopes it’s not a euphemism. God, why is he even thinking that? 
> 
> Anyway, the guy is smiling at her, and touching her arm—and her knee, jesus—and it’s so obvious that he’s into her. Hallsy, for her part, is tipsy but not drunk yet, all smiles and open chatter but no waving arms and spilled drinks. She won’t shut up about hockey when she’s like this, to the point that most of their teammates can’t even be bothered to listen. But whatever, if she wants to chat with a stranger and let him hit on her, that’s her business. She’s not drunk enough to make an idiot of herself. 
> 
> Jordan goes back to his conversation and makes a point of only watching Hallsy out of the corner of his eye.
> 
> Keeping an eye on her turns out to be a good idea, because a while later—and evidently a few drinks for Hallsy—she’s properly drunk. She’s not slurring her words when Jordan gets close enough to hear, but it’s kind of a near thing. The guy looks a little less like he wants to seduce her and more confused, and Hallsy’s got one hand up the back up her shirt, fiddling with the clasp of her bra. 
> 
> “God,” he hears Hallsy say, “I fucking hate bras.” 
> 
> Well, he’s heard that one before, and it’s almost always followed by her taking her bra off and throwing it across the room. She should probably not do that in a bar. 
> 
> Jordan takes a couple more steps toward her, but he’s not quick enough—it feels a little like being on the ice, he can see what she’s planning but can’t always get there fast enough, only this time she’s not anticipating that and compensating for it—and by the time he’s close enough to put a hand on her shoulder, she’s shoving her bra into the purse someone tricked her into carrying. 
> 
> The guy’s eyes look like they’re about to bug out of his head. Jordan resists the urge to roll his eyes. Like he’s never seen a girl take her bra off under her shirt before. 
> 
> Still, it’s a sign that they should probably leave, before Hallsy gets ambitious and takes her shirt off too, so he gets her attention and herds her into a cab. She’s back to her normal brand of drunk-and-handsy by the time the door closes behind him, and the driver gives them a pleading “don’t have sex in my cab” look when she tucks her face into his shoulder. Jordan just shrugs; it’s not like anything is going to happen.

\--

To say their season gets off to a rough start would be understating it, but Hallsy reminds herself that Nuge will be back and Gags will be back and things will get better. Not at some nebulous point in the future after good draft picks but soon, in a month or two, when the team is less injured and more used to the new systems. They start the season off inconsistent, which feels so same-old-same-old that she wants to cry. They can come from behind but they can’t hold leads and some nights it feels like she’s the only person on the ice, trying to drag the team along with her.

Unsurprisingly, those games aren’t anyone’s best, hers included. 

Still, it’s not as bad as it could be. They don’t have any amazing win streaks, but the losing streaks aren’t as bad as last year, either. Hallsy doesn’t whine about playing center to anyone but Ebs, and she doesn’t even whine _that much_.

It’s almost like a good start, if good starts were graded on a curve.

\--

> Jordan knows for a fact that he took the brunt of Hallsy’s whining about playing center at the beginning of the season, because whenever anyone else brought it up, she was perfectly diplomatic about doing her part to help the team. 
> 
> It worked out, because she’s making a good impression on Eakins—though apparently not as much as he is, and Jordan’s a little bamboozled by that because _Hallsy_ , she’s so good. And maybe she successfully healed Nuge’s shoulder with the force of her will or did some sort of black magic. It would be nice if she could so that for Gags, too. 
> 
> She’s sulky, because they’re still losing and sometimes it feels like they’ll never stop losing. There’s always something that’s going wrong. For a while it doesn’t matter how good they are because they’re still giving up five goals a game, and then they can’t score on the powerplay, and they _still_ can’t hold a lead, and Jordan understands when Hallsy looks like she wants to throw things. 
> 
> He still doesn’t like listening to her get angry and frustrated, because it’s nothing he doesn’t already know and because it makes his stomach hurt when she’s not happy. It’s this horrible, visceral feeling that he ought to be able to fix it, even if he knows he can’t do that alone. 
> 
> Not that he stops her from venting. There’s a possibility he needs to investigate learning to say no to Hallsy.

\--

The Olympics is—well, it’s the Olympics. Taylor’s just trying not to get overwhelmed by it, by the fact that she’s here and she’s _playing_ and they’re absolutely gonna tear it up. The men’s team comes to cheer for them in their gold-medal game, which they win by somehow managing to hold a one-goal lead in the third. Jordan hurts her foot blocking a shot in the last five minutes and she’s wincing a little during the handshake line, but she swears it just needs some ice, shut up Marti, we just won a gold medal, I can ice it later. Marti calls her a dumbass, and says that the shot was never going to go in anyway. 

Taylor doesn’t even get in trouble for body checking _once_ in the whole tournament. Ebby sends her a congratulatory text about it. He does also congratulate her for the gold medal, but he sent the other one first. His defense was “I knew you’d win all along,” which ought to sound trite but genuinely makes Taylor’s stomach go a bit funny. 

Still, it’s nice to be back in Edmonton after, not that she tells Ebs as much. She thinks he knows anyway; she’s never been especially good at hiding her feelings and she is awfully happy. 

\--

They clinch a playoff spot in the third week of April. It's not going to be anything amazing; maybe a sixth seed if they win more games than they lose, but Taylor screams so loud she nearly loses her voice. She's standing there on home ice, her stick raised toward the roof and Rexall is deafening like she's never heard it before. 

They're going to the playoffs. 

Holy shit. 

She's still vibrating from excitement when they get home, and Ebby doesn't seem to be doing much better. His hands are shaking as he unlocks the door, and every so often they meet each other's eyes and grin. Taylor's mouth hurts from smiling, and she might not be able to talk tomorrow, and she doesn't care even a little bit. 

They're standing in the hall, just smiling at each other, and—like, this is better than her first NHL goal, this is better than being drafted, this is what they've been trying to do since they showed up in Edmonton for the first time. 

"We did it," she whispers, hoarse and almost disbelieving. Someone's going to call her tomorrow and tell her it's all a joke. Water is wet, the sky is blue, the Oilers never make the playoffs. 

Ebby kisses her. 

She's kissing him back before she even starts thinking about it, because it's Ebby and it's them and they did this together, just like everything else. The kiss lingers, deepens a little, and she's pushing into it. 

He makes a quiet noise when Taylor nips at his lower lip, and she gasps into his mouth. 

It breaks the moment. 

Ebby pulls away, and his expression is unreadable.

"We should try to get some sleep," he says, voice unsteady.

Taylor nods. She doesn't trust herself to speak, so she ducks into her room without saying good night.

\--

They don't talk about it the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. They're tense, awkward with each other in a way they've never been before, but even if Taylor knew what she ought to say to Ebby, it's not like they have enough time to breathe, much less have a serious conversation. 

There's a few more regular season games, and they win three and lose two of them, but no one's focused on those. Taylor doesn't think she's had a conversation that didn't include the word "playoffs" since they clinched, which is perfectly fine by her. 

If nothing else, it's something she can throw herself into, something she loves an impossible amount and that conveniently makes a perfect distraction. Forget not having time to talk to Ebs about the fact that they kissed, she's not even going to have time to think about it. 

(Being busy at least makes it easy to ignore the nagging feeling that he wouldn't have done it if he weren't basically drunk on adrenaline.)

\--

The first game is incredible and exhausting and exhilarating and they win—just barely, but they win—and when they get to the hotel, Taylor falls onto her bed and doesn't wake up for twelve hours, and only then because Gags is pounding on her door and telling her to get her sorry ass down to breakfast.

\--

It hurts to lose—Taylor feels like she’s going to cry when Game 6 ends, the score a stubborn 3-2 that hasn’t changed since the second period—but they salute the crowd and force themselves to sound upbeat in the interviews. It’s easier than she thought it would be, because the mood of the whole city was so palpably different since they clinched. She wants to win, she always wants to win, and getting a little closer doesn’t make losing easier, but at least she can look back at the season and say that the whole team can be proud of it. 

And then it’s summer, an endless, foreboding stretch of days filled with training and golf and video games and the incredible dullness of Kingston. A lot of time to think about what it means that Ebby kissed her.

If it means anything. 

She knows how high she was on adrenaline, nearly crawling out of her skin with it, and Ebby was just as bad, and sometimes people do things when they’re hyped up like that. It’s like being drunk on excitement. He hasn’t said anything about it, and she doesn’t want to bring it up and make things weird(er than they already are). 

At least between the awkwardness and the misery of losing, it’s really easy to leave for the summer. 

\--

> Jordan’s mother has given him more lectures than he can count about how to not be a jerk to women, and probably a solid two-thirds of them have been directly or indirectly about Taylor. He has no idea when or how she figured out that he was completely gone for Taylor, but she did, and she made very sure he knew how to have an unrequited crush on his best friend without treating her like crap because of it.
> 
> Basically, Jordan doesn’t want to push. Taylor is pretty much is favorite person in the world, and the absolute last thing he wants to do is put her in a weird situation or make her uncomfortable. It’s probably better to see if she brings up the kiss, rather than saying something and giving her the wrong idea.
> 
> Well, letting her think he’s in love with her wouldn’t exactly be the wrong idea, but like. Making her think that he _expects_ anything from her because of it would be. 
> 
> What it all boils down to is that Jordan is, like, ninety nine percent sure the not-a-jerk move here is to see what Taylor does. If she brings the kiss up, that’s great, but if she ignores it that means she probably never wanted him to kiss her in the first place and they’re better off never talking about it.
> 
> It’s not like Taylor is shy about bringing up things she wants (or things she dislikes, for that matter.)

\--

Taylor’s been home for three weeks when her mom starts shooting her unusually concerned looks. Like, she always gets concerned looks in the summer, because she maybe spends a lot of time shut up in her room texting Ebby and stuff, but this summer seems especially bad.

Maybe it’s because she’s not talking about Ebby all the time. 

They’ve been texting a bit, but every time Taylor starts typing out a message, she ends up second-guessing it until she decides not to send it after all. She doesn’t want him to think she’s like, pushing for them to start dating or something. It was totally just an adrenaline-fueled kiss. It happens to everyone, right?

Either way, after a few weeks, her mom comes into her room and asks her, very seriously, “Honey, is everything okay?”

Taylor shrugs, because saying yes would be a lie but she also doesn’t want to talk about whatever isn’t going on with her and Ebby. Her mom doesn’t look any less concerned, so Taylor says, “Nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.” 

That was possibly the wrong thing to say, because her mom’s mouth twists. “Are you sure?”

“Definitely,” Taylor says, as firmly as she said it every time her mom asked if she was sure about the OHL. She’s less sure about this than she was about that, but she’s good at faking confidence when the situation calls for it. 

\--

It’s not really the best summer of Taylor’s life. She spends a lot of time playing NHL ‘14 by herself, and even more time working out. She watches a bunch of movies she’s been meaning to see for a while, and watches the Blue Jays lose a lot of games, and makes a point of not answering Ebby’s texts too quickly. 

When he asks if she wants to go to Stampede, she tells him that she’s going to be busy. Her mom looks concerned but doesn’t say anything, because she’s not the type to push when Tayor doesn’t want to share. 

It’s not like there’s anything new to say, anyway. She’s got a pathetic crush; it’ll go away eventually.

\--

Taylor’s always thrown by how much getting back to Edmonton in September feels like going home. The airport is familiar in a way that resonates in her stomach—she knows the closest Timmies to her gate without even having to think about it, and she could find the baggage claim with her eyes closed.

Ebby’s in Calgary for another few days, so she gets a cab from the airport. Her car’s in the garage and the house smells a little stale from being mostly unused for the offseason, but it’s still great to drag her suitcases into her room and collapse onto the bed. 

Still, the house is too empty. There’s no one rustling in any of the other bedrooms, with Ebs not back yet and Whits gone. Maybe they should get a dog or something, to take up the extra space. Or maybe Ebby will want to move out or something. Maybe she should, since she avoided him all summer.

The idea alone of not living with Ebby turns her stomach to lead, and it takes her a few minutes to force the feeling away enough to get up and order some dinner. She ought to go grocery shopping, since there is absolutely no food in the entire house, but her eyes are heavy and all she wants to do is stare at the TV until she passes out. 

She actually does drift off on the couch after she eats some takeout, and wakes up at 2:30 in the morning with a tight muscle in her shoulder from holding her head awkwardly. Rubbing at it and grimacing, she drags herself back to the bed she—thankfully—got the cleaning lady to make the last time she came through and is asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow.

\--

In the morning, she regrets not going for groceries because one of the many things they don’t have is coffee. Taylor glares at the kitchen counter for a long time before she resigns herself to spending twenty minutes finding her car keys so that she can drive to Timmies. And then the grocery store. 

The drive is comforting and familiar, even if she usually makes it with Ebs in the front seat complaining about the radio station. She’s barely talked to him since breakup day, and then only just a little bit. No one had much to say that day, just a few tight smiles between interviews. She’s had all summer to distance herself from how awful it felt when the last buzzer went and they were out, and it’s easier to put it in perspective now. It’s not hard to call up the awful heartbreak, so strong it made her want to throw up, but now when she says that it was a good season and she’s proud of the team, she isn’t just reciting words. It feels good to mean it, to be able to accept the compliment when people tell her they had a great season. 

Now the hard knot in her stomach is because of Ebs.

It’s not an improvement, as such.

\--

> The first time he sees Taylor after a while of being apart is always the hardest, in terms of not saying really dumb shit like “I love you. Let’s get married and maybe have some kids in a few years.” 
> 
> It’s great in all other ways, though, because it means he gets to _see Taylor_. Jordan’s working on the other stuff. As long as he doesn’t actually say any of it, they’ll be okay.

\--

Taylor’s asleep on the couch when Ebs gets home, but the noise of him hauling his bags in wakes her up. 

“Sorry,” he says, barely above a whisper even though she’s clearly awake.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, her voice a little scratchy with sleep. And she means it, even if everything about him is confusing as fuck right now. It’s normal that she wants to hug him and even that she wishes she could kiss him hello, but then she thinks of the way it felt when he kissed her. 

She stays where she is, because the status quo has clearly changed and she doesn’t want to be the one who ruins everything. 

Her eyes are closed when she feels the seat next to her dip. 

“Hey,” Ebby says, his voice warm and familiar. 

“Hi.” She smiles, but it doesn’t make her feel like her response was any less terse. 

“Have you eaten anything but KD today?” he asks, and she laughs. 

“I had a burger for lunch.” 

There’s a pause. “Who’d you go out with?”

“I can cook a burger!” Taylor says, but can’t even manage to keep up a fake-offended tone for the whole sentence. 

Ebs shoves her, not nearly to hard enough to hurt, and then they’re laughing and trying to push each other off the sofa. It doesn’t end until he has her elbows pinned so that she couldn’t fight back even if she wasn’t laughing too hard to move. “Uncle,” she gasps, because breathing is getting hard. “Uncle, uncle, oh my god.” 

He lets her go and climbs back into his seat. Taylor knows an opening when she sees one, though, and immediately reaches over to tickle him. 

“Cheater!” Ebby yells, but he’s laughing so it doesn’t count.

\--

Training camp starts up, the same as it’s always been. It’s hard days skating until she feels like her legs are going to give out, a little new but mostly familiar. Mainly, it’s too grueling to leave much time for anything that isn’t eating, sleeping, or hockey. 

It’s a nice escape, really. She and Ebs are playing together as well as they always have, and that’s all that matters right now. They drive to the rink together, and at the end of every day, they stumbled home, shovel some food into their mouths, and pass out. It’s easy and low-effort and Taylor doesn’t have to worry about much of anything except making sure passes connect and shots go in.

That’s the fun stuff, anyway.

\--

It feels like camp is over as quickly as it starts, and then they’re all settling in for the grind of the season. The last of the kids get sent down to OKC and most of the rest of them settle in a little more comfortably. 

The beginning of the season is rocky—they’re inconsistent, sometimes putting away comfortable wins and other nights they have to claw tooth and nail to even make a game of it. They manage to beat the Canucks soundly at home on a night that’s followed by three days without games, which means there’s really nothing to do but go out and celebrate. 

Taylor squeezes into a booth at their usual bar with Gags on one side and Schultzy on the other. Ebs is getting their drinks at the bar and chatting pleasantly with the bartender. He grins at her when he sits down on the opposite side of the table, squeezing Nuge into what looks like an uncomfortably small space in the middle. The conversation flows easily around them and, with only a light practice tomorrow, everyone feels pretty comfortable getting a little hammered. 

Ebby makes a weird face at her when she drops her head onto Sam’s shoulder after her third beer. Taylor ignores it. Sam’s shoulder isn’t as comfortable as Ebby’s but it’ll do in a pinch. Maybe if Ebs weren’t on the other side of the table, then she could put her head on his shoulder but he is. Taylor pouts a little, but no one comments on it. 

She’s in that stage of drunk where just letting everything flow around her feels perfect. She doesn’t pay a lot of attention, but she can tell when Sam talks, because his voice resonates in her head. He doesn’t push her away or try to get her to move, but he doesn’t put an arm around her shoulders and rub her back the way Ebby would, either. 

Ebby’s kind of the best ever.

\--

A few hours and a few drinks (and a lot of water) later, Taylor’s stumbling a little in the foyer of their house, with Ebby’s arm around her shoulders. She kicks her shoes off and leaves them on the floor. It’s clear that Ebs is a bit sloshed cause he doesn’t say anything about it, just drops his arm from her shoulders and winds it around her waist, pulling her in so that she’s leaning against him. “Don’t fall down.”

His steps aren’t exactly steady either, and the way she’s leaning against him probably isn’t helping, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s nice and warm, having her whole side pressed up against him. He’s a little wobbly, but he’s more stable than air, and she doesn’t feel like she’s about to fall over. 

It’s easy, from there, to lean in and kiss the corner of his mouth. He kisses back immediately, the arm around her waist tightening to keep her close. It’s a little sloppy, too much tongue and not enough finesse, but Taylor presses into it anyway. It’s not like she’s sober enough to have any technique beyond wanting her tongue in Ebby’s mouth—and he’s not complaining, either. 

Her shirt rides up when she squirms closer to him, and his fingers are hot on her skin. His lips are soft and wet and when she tugs the bottom one between her teeth, his fingers clench on her hip. 

She’s breathing heavily when they finally break apart, and when she opens her mouth, no words come out. 

“We shouldn’t,” Ebby says. His voice is rough in a way she’s never heard before, but he’s pulled his arm away from her waist and stepping back. “Good night.”

He’s already ducked into his room by the time Taylor finds her voice to reply. 

\--

It’s probably a minor miracle that she wakes up without a hangover. Well, a minor miracle and a lot of aspirin.

\--

Taylor can’t keep her cool at practice the next day. She’s worked so much on this, on keeping her head and playing clean and she _just can’t do it_. She’s flying across the ice, sure, but she’s throwing elbows everywhere, and when she nearly gets Gags in the face Coach pulls her aside and asks if everything is okay. She shrugs and nods, because she doesn’t want to lie but the truth isn’t really an option either. 

In the locker room after, she overhears Duby asking Ebby in an undertone if he’s going to be sleeping on the sofa tonight, and she just—snaps. 

“He’s not my fucking boyfriend!” she yells across the room. It’s too forceful, and her voice cracks on “fucking,” which makes it sound like she’s about to cry. Or maybe she is about to cry. It’s hard to tell. 

Regardless, she shoves her stuff in her bag, throws on the bare minimum clothes she needs to drive home, and books it. 

\--

> What Jordan wants to say when Hallsy finally comes into the kitchen is "are you okay?" but what comes out is "what the fuck is wrong with you?"
> 
> They're not off to a good start after that.
> 
> He usually makes a point of keeping his temper, but Hallsy is sullen and grouchy and she’s barely spoken to him all day. It’s because of last night, he’s sure, but every time he tries to find a way to bring it up while he’s making dinner, she just snaps at him. “I don’t wanna hear it, Ebs,” or “What’s next, are you going to ask me if I’m on my period?” 
> 
> It doesn’t matter what he was going to say next—not that he even knows—because she doesn’t let him say anything before she rolls her eyes and grabs her plate off the table, retreating into her bedroom and slamming the door behind her.

\--

Taylor sneaks out later than she’s willing to admit to wash her plate. She’s spent enough time sitting on her bed staring at the TV that she feels a little bad for snapping at Ebs. Not bad enough to apologize, but bad enough to not leave dirty dishes in the sink all night. 

She’s got a soapy sponge in one hand when she hears footsteps behind her, the familiar padding of Ebby’s bare feet across the living room carpet. Her back is to him, which means she can make a face. This is what she was trying to avoid. 

“Hi,” Ebs says, soft and a little rough, like maybe he was asleep and woke up. It’s pretty late.

Taylor doesn’t turn around. Ebs moves so he’s standing beside her at the sink, and takes the plate from her hands when she’s done washing it, wiping it try and setting it on the counter. They finish the rest of her dishes in silence, but when everything’s sitting dry on the counter, Ebs turns toward her and smiles thinly. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have—”

"Why don't you want to kiss me?" Taylor asks, hoping it comes out angrier and less hurt than she thinks it does.

Ebs stares at her, and doesn’t say anything for a long moment. There’s just a split second, so short Taylor thinks she might have imagined it, where he looks like he’s about to laugh. She braces herself physically, like she can see someone coming toward her on the ice and knows there’s going to be an impact. 

“I want to kiss you so much,” Ebs says, too fast to be entirely calm. “I just don’t want to kiss you unless you want me to.” He’s not meeting her eyes, which is unlike him. He’s always been the composed one, comparatively speaking. Older and more mature and less of a disaster and able to talk about all the things she ignores in favor of playing the kind of hockey that gets her in trouble with Coach. 

“Oh,” Taylor says, barely more than an exhale. 

She’s standing in the kitchen at midnight, with soap bubbles drying on her hand, and Ebby is standing in front of her, and he just said that he wants to kiss her. Mostly, Taylor’s trying to make sure she doesn’t forget how to breathe. 

“Taylor?” Ebby says, soft and a little shaky. “Please say something.” 

It’s like whatever was keeping her still shatters into a thousand pieces, and she’s stepping into his space before she even processes that it’s happening. Her throat feels too dry to talk, and maybe her hands are shaking a little bit, but it doesn’t matter because she’s pressing her lips to the corner of Ebby’s, and then they’re kissing. 

There’s a split second of hesitation and then Ebs makes a tiny, almost broken noise and kisses her back. It’s not long, or dirty, or anything more than a lingering press of their mouths together, too firm and too sure to be anything but what it is. Taylor pulls back to lean their foreheads together, the way they do so often on the ice. She can feel Ebby’s breath against her skin, the heat radiating off him. 

“I _definitely_ want you to kiss me,” she says, maybe a little smug. It’s hard not to be when Ebby is looking at her like that. 

This time Ebby kisses her, and this time it’s everything the last kiss wasn’t—open mouths, tongues tangling, the scrape of his teeth across her lower lip, Ebby’s arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her in flush against him. Taylor’s breathing a little hard when she finally pulls away, even if it’s only to trail a few kisses across his jaw. 

“You’re sure about this, right?” he asks, right against her ear. 

“Yes,” she says, and then, “Fuck, really fucking sure,” as he nips at her earlobe and kisses down the side of her neck. “Don’t stop.” 

He doesn’t. His hand is large and firm on the small of her back, and the only thing that could possibly make it better is if it was against her skin, but Taylor doesn’t want to stop kissing him to take her shirt off. 

Eventually, Ebby pulls away and stops her when she tries to chase his mouth. He sucks in an audible breath and then says, voice strained, “I really, really don’t want to stop, but we probably should.” 

Taylor frowns at him. He taps her lower lip with his thumb, a little playful, and says, “I don’t put out till the third date. What kind of girl do you think I am?” 

The promise in his voice makes it easier to take a step back, even if her whole body feels like it’s buzzing and the only thing she wants to is get Ebby’s hands all over her. His lips are red and a little swollen, visible even in the low light of the kitchen. Taylor grins at Ebs, unforced, and moves to leave the room.

He startles her by spinning her back against him for a quick, searing kiss that leaves her trying to remember how to work her hands. 

“Good night, Hallsy,” he says, low against her ear. “We’re not pretending this didn’t happen tomorrow.” 

“Good night, Ebby,” she says. By the time she’s back in her room, her cheeks hurt from smiling.

\--

When Taylor comes into the kitchen the following morning, Ebby has already made pancakes and coffee. He hands her a mug and leans forward to kiss her quickly. She doesn’t let it linger too long, because as nice as kissing him is: _coffee_. She takes a few sips from the mug she’s holding and grins at Ebby. 

“Thanks,” she says, and his smile is so warm it makes her fingers itch to touch him. 

“You’re welcome,” he says, and then, “Good morning.” 

There’s a kind of forced normality to it all—Ebby makes breakfast and they eat it together and they go into the living room to sit around and watch TV until they need to get ready for practice. Finally, Taylor cracks the silence that feels like a parody of their normal lazy mornings, and stares him down.

“Jordan,” she says, forcing her voice to be completely steady, pulling in all the pieces of maturity and stability she’s forced herself to learn for hockey. “Are we doing this?”

He meets her eyes, his voice as steady as hers was and much, much surer than she feels, and says, “Yes.”

There’s a moment where Taylor’s just letting it sink in, before the word processes all the way and realizes what it really entails, how much it changes. 

“Taylor?” Ebby says, a little cautious, and she kisses him. It’s not too long, but it is as dirty as she can make it, tongue and a hint of teeth and almost hard enough to hurt. 

“Good.” She grins, letting it dissolve when Ebby kisses her. They topple over on the couch, ending up with Taylor straddling Ebby’s hips, his fingers hooked in her belt loops to tug her close. There’s no time for it to go anywhere before they need to start getting ready for practice, which is really too bad, given that Taylor would really like to at least lose their shirts, even if it doesn’t go further than that yet. 

\--

Luckily, they have plenty of time after a pretty light practice, and they managed to lose their shirts _and_ their pants.

\--

It doesn’t actually change all that much, they find out. Taylor feels like everything is more or less the way it was before she and Jordan—in Sam’s words—got their heads out of their asses. They play a lot of video games and even more hockey and hang out with their teammates, and then after all that, they make out and have sex and fall asleep in the same bed. Ebby’s bed, usually, because his room is cleaner and his bed is nicer. 

Everyone makes fun of them for being married, but they were always kind of like this, and the vast increase in the ratio of sex to chirping makes it a lot easier to put up with the jokes. Somehow, being teased about dating Ebs is a lot funnier when it’s actually happening than when she just wants it to be happening. 

They don’t broadcast that they’re together now, because it’s no one else’s fucking business, and because Taylor doesn’t want to have to deal with the shit that people would day. She never says that in so many words, but it seems like Ebby understands, given that he doesn’t push it. The team knows, and their families know, and fuck everyone else. She still buries her face in Ebby’s neck every other time they hug on the ice, and no one thinks anything of it, so there’s no reason to stop.

\--

Their home opener is late—they played three games on the road first—and the team feels almost settled by the time they’re suiting up in the room at Rexall. Taylor swallows hard, because the weight of expectations on them is palpable in the room. It’s hardly the first time she’s felt that way, but it’s even heavier now. Not just the need to succeed eventually, or now, but the need to take success they achieved and not only repeat it but improve on it. 

Ebs bumps his hand against hers, their pinkies touching briefly. He doesn’t say anything, but he smiles she when meets his eyes. 

“We got this,” she says, low enough that no one else hears her. His smile widens.

“Definitely.”

\--

And then it’s the same as it has been for four years now. Taylor uses the anthem to steady herself, runs through her mental checklist of things to pay attention to in her game. 

A few seconds into the game, Ebs passes to her, smooth and tape-to-tape, and she’s lost in the rhythm of the game. There’s nothing but the sharp cold air, the dull roar of the crowd, the noise of skates cutting across the ice. Nuge to one side of her, one of the Kings approaching on the other. She ducks the check, stickhandles around him, skates away toward the other end of the ice. 

This is the easy part.


End file.
